Inspiring disabilities on Sports Relief

I don’t know if you agree, but I find that television events such as Sports Reliefcan be a mixed bag of comedy genius and cringe-worthy, cheesy attempts at humour. But with a myriad of stars jumping on the fund-raising bandwagon, I approached this years Sports Relief with reserved optimism!

However, my fears were pleasantly met by a night of belly-laughing fun, that is when you weren’t weeping at the heart-warming appeals. But that is not what I am here to talk about on the Inspire blog, my desire to comment on Sports Relief came from seeing the inclusion of sports people with disabilities.

Included in the all male choir was wheelchair user Ade Adepitan, and dressage Paralympian Lee Pearson, along with tone-deaf athletes of course!Ok that doesn’t seem a lot, and I’ll be honest, I was disappointed there wasn’t a Paralympic part, like a wheelchair basketball-a-thon!

But the best thing for me was that during the third part of Eddie Izzard‘s marathon challenge (where he ran 43 marathons, over a 1,000 miles in 51 days around the UK) he was joined by not only Ade Adepitan, but also a Andy, a soldier who lost his legs in a mountain climbing accident after returning home from Iraq. Andy has covered over 1,000 miles on his hand cycle, and decided to join Eddie Izzard to motivate him on part of his run. One comment he made has stuck in my head; “you can do anything you want to do, it just takes a lot of ingenuity, normally some sort of specialist equipment, and a lot of stubbornness, but you can still go out and you can still do anything you want.”